The discovery of vast reserves of rare earth elements (REE) in central Türkiye could position the country as a key player in the global supply chains for clean energy and defence sectors.
The Beylikova site in Eskisehir is estimated to hold 694 million tonnes of deposits, which places the country in the second position globally in REE reserves after China.
REEs are obscure-sounding, yet highly valuable, 17 metals that have become the invisible engines of modern life – from mobile phones, electric vehicles and wind turbine generators to high-tech weaponry like precision-guided missiles.
According to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Türkiye is in talks with international companies for possible collaboration to develop the REE sector.
“We aim to become one of the world’s top-five REE producers,” Erdogan said earlier this month.
Türkiye’s find coincides with a growing US-China trade war over REEs. Beijing has restricted exports to Washington, a move that has dealt a major blow to the US, whose auto, phone and weapons manufacturing industries are heavily dependent on Chinese supplies.
“Power in this century will not depend on the size of (REE) reserves alone, but on the ability to refine, process, and apply them across industries,” Mustafa Kumral, dean of the Faculty of Mining at Istanbul Technical University, tells TRT World.
Rare earth elements have gained centrality in global supply chains as they power permanent magnets – metals that generate a magnetic field without electricity.
Permanent magnets make electric motors lighter, turbines more efficient, and precision weapons more accurate.
The magnet suite – which consists of elements like neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium – represents more than 90 percent of global REE trade value, while accounting for only a small portion of the total volume, Kumral says.
Control over these “magnet metals” translates into global economic clout, technological edge, and geopolitical sway, he says.
The discovery of REE reserves comes at a pivotal moment. The critical minerals market is projected to grow from $325 billion last year to $770 billion by 2040.
Countries are racing to diversify away from China’s near-monopoly in this sector, as the Asian giant currently processes about 90 percent of the world’s supply.
For Türkiye, the discovery provides a chance to leapfrog from being a non-player in the REE segment to a high-value innovator, reshaping its role in the multipolar resource race.
Sait Uysal, a mining industry veteran and founder of the Critical Minerals Initiative, calls the REE reserves a “phenomenal gift” but warns that monetising them demands navigating a treacherous value chain.
He tells TRT World that the upstream phase – mining ore and producing basic concentrate – is the “most straightforward” for Türkiye, thanks to its mature mining sector.
The government is already setting up a pilot processing plant to kickstart extraction.
But the midstream hurdle looms largest, he says.
That phase will involve refining the concentrate into high-purity individual elements.
This “extremely complex and capital-intensive process” has long been China’s domain, Uysal says, requiring over a decade of dedicated research and development, hundreds of specialised researchers, and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment.
Türkiye’s plan, he says, should be based on strategic partnership or technology transfer agreements with companies that already possess the critical refining know-how.
Only then can the country advance to downstream manufacturing of magnets for EVs and turbines, leveraging its robust automotive base, he says.
“Fully monetising it hinges on Türkiye’s ability to strategically navigate the immense technical and financial barrier of midstream refining,” Uysal says, adding that international collaboration will be key to unlocking the true value of its REE reserves.
Salih Cihangir, associate professor at Munzur University’s Rare Earth Elements Application and Research Centre in Tunceli, tells TRT World that Türkiye has already progressed beyond basic leaching, which is the chemical process to extract valuable minerals from ore.
The country has achieved “laboratory and, to a lesser extent, pilot scale” production of commercially purified fractions of some elements, he says.
But scaling up from this stage to become a high-value producer of rare earth compounds or REE-containing finished products means achieving a number of milestones, Cihangir says.
These milestones include bulk separation into individual REE oxides, alloy production, downstream manufacturing to utilise high-value REE compounds, and rigorous environmental, health, and safety (EHS) protocols.
“Addressing (EHS protocols) proactively is critical to avoiding delays and ensuring robust time and risk management across the entire value chain,” Cihangir says.
Framing the narrative beyond economics, Kumral of Istanbul Technical University views REEs as the avenue for countries to achieve technological independence in a multipolar world.
“Türkiye must build a full ecosystem that connects resources to research, production, and diplomacy,” he says.
Doing so will turn geological luck into “lasting strategic leverage”, especially as the clean energy transition accelerates and mineral-rich countries fortify their supply chains, he adds.
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Bridging the expertise gap
Expertise gaps amplify the challenge of monetising the rare geological deposits into REE-containing finished products.
Uysal says that the vast majority of operational expertise in mining and, more importantly, refining REEs currently resides in China.
Yet the West will not be starting from scratch.
“The US was actually the world’s leading REE producer until the 1990s. So there is a historical foundation of expertise there, which is now being actively revitalised,” he says.
Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths leads non-Chinese efforts in mining and refining, while Europe and Japan excel in specific downstream applications like magnet and alloy manufacturing, he says.
Türkiye’s current expertise is limited because it has no operational REE mines or refineries, Uysal says.
“The knowledge that exists is primarily at the laboratory and academic level, which is a good starting point for research, but is a long way from industrial-scale production,” he says.
Cihangir of Munzur University adds some historical nuance to the question of expertise. The US began specialising in REE processing well before China, only to falter in the 1990s when “national interests were not prioritised as they are today”.
“As a result, procurement increasingly shifted to China, which offered low-cost labour and production with comparatively less stringent health and safety regulations,” he says.
By concentrating on these processes, China gained substantial experience and progressively developed safer and more efficient production stages, he adds.
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Meanwhile, EU states also attained REE processing know-how, primarily at a “strategic and pre-commercial level”.
Similarly, Australia also now boasts of “significant expertise” in large-scale REE production.
While Türkiye shines in mining, concentrate production, and chemical cracking and leaching, there is still a long way to go before the country can be classified as a bulk commercial producer of REEs, Cihangir says.
Kumral advocates “selective international collaboration” in areas like solvent extraction and waste management, which blends “local ownership with foreign process expertise” under strong environmental and intellectual property terms.
He says Türkiye’s balanced foreign policy that maintains working ties with both the West and Asia positions it as a “natural bridge” between the two.
"Rare earth technologies spread through alliances, not markets,” he says.
Geopolitics sweetens the deal for Western tie-ups.
Uysal considers China an unlikely partner in Türkiye’s journey to become an REE market leader. Beijing has strict controls on exporting its advanced REE processing technology, as it wants to maintain its competitive advantage and market dominance, he says.
But the US, Europe, and Japan, all of whom are desperately seeking to diversify their supply chains away from China, view Türkiye as a “stable, reliable, and friendly alternative” to Chinese REE dominance.
Türkiye already has a “large pool of talented engineers and technicians” who can be trained to operate REE production facilities, Uysal says.
Türkiye can position itself as a key strategic partner for the West and Japan in the global REE market by leveraging its “massive, untapped resource”, he adds.
“What is critically needed is the core technology and the initial group of experienced experts – the instructors or mentors – to transfer that knowledge and train the local workforce,” he says.
